Wiki Standards
The Idea This wiki has several purposes to fulfill, in no particular order: *Inform players about the game world (Gervas) in general and how they fit into it *Remind players what's happened in prior sessions, both in-game and out *Share the fun with our friends (and, because Wikia doesn't have private wikis, the world) Please keep these in mind when editing. It's just as important not to be intimidated out of editing, though--this wiki will be greatly enhanced if all of the players and the GM combine their powers. How to Wiki Wikia has decent help to start off with. Then, you might want to look at MediaWiki syntax to get a slightly better idea of how things work and things you can type to make magic happen. Once you're comfortable there, MediaWiki's template help and Wikia's template help will help you understand the green puzzle pieces you may occasionally see and how they work. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, magic words and how to customize the site's CSS and Javascript may amuse you, and the Extensions may inspire you to do crazy shit. Formatting A consistent look and feel will make the wiki a more pleasant place. Diversity is for content. Headers Use them as appropriate. If you can logically group several paragraphs together under a section heading, do it. Group by major events/settings in play sessions. In other articles, try to think of how the content is broken up. As an example, this page probably goes a little bit overboard on headers. Please don't end headers with colons. It looks stupid, communicates nothing, and will use up all of the internet's virtual ink. Links The current consensus seems to be that if there's a topic that could need further explanation, such as a notable figure, organization, place, or event, you should link to it. There's a button in the rich text editor, or you can use two sets of brackets surrounding whatever words should be the link. See MediaWiki syntax. Note that a page doesn't have to exist for you to link to it, and if it doesn't exist the link will be colored red. Clicking that link will allow you to create the page. is an auto-generated list of such links. To avoid cluttering the paragraphs, an oft-mentioned person or thing should generally only be linked to the first time it appears in each paragraph or perhaps every other paragraph. If a paragraph is effectively blue because it's full of different things that are being linked to, think of splitting up the paragaph somehow, adding detail to items in sentences to separate the links from one another, or maybe even just not linking to some stuff in that paragraph (maybe wait for the next time it's mentioned). Style As much as possible, write as though you're writing short encyclopedia articles on your characters. For play session notes, game events are to be written as though they're being described as they happen (present tense), and in third-person omniscient. Tone is generally on the jocular side of a fiction novel. Using ampersands (an amperand is the & sign) in place of the word "and" will get you paddled. No arguments. Also, try to spell things correctly. It makes the wiki easier to read and more share-able. Templates A lot of templates are still in-the-works. For example, the current PC infobox (as seen on Kara Virtanen) kind of blows right now. The encounter infobox, as seen on Session 1: The Train Station, is pretty good and is probably the best thing on that page as of its first draft. Country infoboxes might turn up sometime but are currently hard to justify because there's not much information to summarize on them. Editing Other People's Work Remember that a wiki is collaborative. Do feel free to change what people have put in, but be polite about it. Try to add rather than subtract--unlike Wikipedia, we are not generally in favor of deletion here. If the urge to take something out comes to you, consider finding a place to move it first. Outside Resources So as not to fuck up Wikia's shit, try to keep blatant copyright violation to a minimum. Remember that there are copyrights on photos. When uploading someone else's work to this wiki without their permission, note that the intent is to use it under Fair Use provisions (i.e. not making money from it) and credit the source explicitly if you can. If you can't do that, at least link back to where you found it or how you found it. If you can't do that (e.g. found it on 4chan) consider not using it at all. Category:Meta